Room 8

Y’all know I’m an Old Cat Lady but here’s a Cat Tail—see what I did there—that I had never heard before, and it’s pretty cool.

One school day in 1952 a large but rather thin, shorthaired, grey-striped tabby wandered into a sixth-grade classroom of the Elysian Heights Elementary School  in Echo Park, where he jumped up onto the desks and was welcomed by the children.

Now, the teacher wasn't so sure about allowing a cat in a classroom, especially what seemed to be a stray, but when the kids pointed out how skinny he was she allowed them to give him some milk. After recess, when they returned to their room, the cat was asleep on a desk, and some of the children's lunchboxes had been opened and the contents scattered around!

Clearly the cat was hungry and making himself at home. So much so that he followed the kids into the lunchroom where they shared their food with him. He then followed them back to class and fell asleep while they continued their studies, and when he awoke, he went out to the playground and left through the gate. They weren't expecting to see him again.

But the next morning he was back, following the kids into their classroom, and as time went by this became his regular routine … attending class with the kids and then leaving as the day ended. Over the teacher’s objections, the cat was adopted by the students and they decided to name him Room 8.

That was the classroom he liked to frequent so 'Room 8' he became, and he eventually became an unofficial school mascot and could be found patrolling the halls or sleeping on a desk. He still went to lunch with the students and though they weren't supposed to feed him, they did, and he became quite plump.

A student from the sixth grade was appointed 'cat feeder' each year, regarded as a very important position in the school, and Room 8's formal feeding took place in the teachers' room, so the cat feeder was privileged. The school did have one hard and fast rule: 'Don't bother the cat'. If he interfered too much with classroom activities, he would be gently relocated by a 'cat remover'.

No one knew where Room 8 went at night or during school holidays, or even over the course of the summer, though most believed he slept in the nearby hills. One teacher, who was a friend and supporter of Room 8 discovered that he'd been born in 1947, making him about 5 when he first came to the school, and that he was a neighborhood animal who had been ill treated at his home. It seems likely that Room 8 just moved out and into the school, a second home; no one knew where he spent weekends, school holidays and summers, though every September Room 8 would be back, right on schedule, for the start of the new school year.

Soon the local media picked up the story as Room 8's fame had spread beyond Echo Park, and even beyond Los Angeles. He made personal appearances at local cat shows and community groups and was made an honorary member of various organizations. In late 1962 Look magazine ran a three-page spread on him; in 1964 Room 8's pawprints were embedded in wet cement in front of the school where they still exist today; in 1966, his ‘biography’ and there was an article about him the following year in a national publication for elementary-school pupils; and in 1968 he was featured in part of a television documentary. Each year he joined the sixth-grade children for their class photograph, and the honor of holding him went to that year's cat feeder.

At the height of his fame Room 8 was receiving fan mail, sometimes 100 letters a day and in total approximately 10,000 letters were received in his lifetime, from nearly every state and several foreign countries. The fifth- and sixth-grade students became 'cat secretaries', answering each piece of mail by hand and signing it with a rubber-stamp pawprint.

As Room 8 aged, there were some health issues; he began losing some teeth; he was injured in a cat fight in 1963, and then a year later Room 8 contracted pneumonia and nearly died. As he aged he began to accept hospitality from friends and neighbors near the school at night and when school was not in session.

In 1968 a summer school was held at Elysian Heights for the first time for some years and Room 8 attended faithfully every day until he became very ill and had to be taken to the hospital. He died on August 13, 1968, of kidney failure, as happens so often with older cats. He was 21, and in his lifetime had become an important part of the school and the community at large.

Room 8 was given a three-column obituary with accompanying photo in the Los Angeles Times, and his passing was noted by various other publications, including the Christian Science Monitor. He was buried at the Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park at Calabasas, with the Nakano family—who’d looked after him at night and on school breaks—laying a wreath of roses and carnations on his grave because he used to love sniffing the flowers in their garden. Students raised money to buy a gravestone for Room 8 and it can still be seen today.

In 1972 former students of the school created the Room 8 Memorial Cat Foundation, a no-kill shelter supported by donations that still exists today. And today, half a century after Room 8 passed, the Elysian Heights School still remembers him with affection and maintains several mementoes of him, including a painting that hangs in the school office, and two paintings in the hall next to a larger version of his memorial medallion. Room 8 is front and center in a mosaic mural in the library, and another mural on the side of the auditorium, and his likeness painted on the outside of a classroom building. The school proudly announces its famous feline with foot-high letters on Echo Park Avenue at its junction with Baxter Street: 'Elysian Heights School. Home of Room 8. School Cat 1952-1968'. And each year, first- and second-grade pupils have the book about Room 8 read to them by their teachers.

What a wonderful way to honor and remember him and all he gave to that school and those students over the sixteen years he “went” there and in the years since.

Purr'n'Fur